Happy to be hOMe again. Conveniently, i feel that way almost anywhere i go… and yet there’s this familiar flavor of effortless contentment on some of my favorite patches of Asian soil. The static subsides…

Mozzies & the Matrix

Mahabodhi Stupa at Bodhgaya

Last month in Bodhgaya (where the Buddha formerly known as Prince Siddhartha, having spurned his 9-to-5, sat beneath the Bodhi tree posing for tourist paintings, many of which are still available today), i was fortunate enough to attend the 25th annual Nonviolent Mosquito Eviction Festival*, where i nearly mastered the gentle kung-fu technique; after a slow start, through diligent practice, i eventually succeeded in liberating well over 400 skeeters from the confines of my room without harm, and by the end i had accomplished the level of “Two Mosquitos in One Glass and Third in Hollow Fist,” which i’m told is pretty good for a rookie.

Mingyur Rinpoche, a rising star of the exile-born lamas (and now my main meditation teacher), offered very helpful elaborations on the practice, and also gave the transmission of the ancient, ear-whispered commentaries on the Matrix (“When Neo sees the electricity and stops the bullets, that’s a very good description of arriving at the first Bhumi“). And as if that weren’t auspicious enough, there were also 10,000+ monks, nuns, and laypeople making prayers for world peace and offering free medical treatments to thousands of impoverished Indian villagers, so the mozzies and i weren’t the only beneficiaries… 😉

[*CLARIFICATION — Since a few of you expressed confusion about how to discern the border between truth and humor in the story above, allow me to shed some light: There’s no such thing as a “mosquito eviction festival” — the Kagyu Monlam is a somber and inspiring traditional Buddhist gathering for world peace, which merely happens to take place in a land that is blessed with multitudes of mozzies on a mission to teach us compassion and forbearance — but the part about nonviolently removing over 400 of them from my hotel room is completely true. “It’s all in the wrist.” And, yes, Mingyur Rinpoche did refer to that scene from the Matrix in his explanation of what it’s like to begin to see reality as it is but, no, he didn’t actually comment on the mosquito kung-fu practice — nor would he have, since it’s double top secret! 😉 ]

On Noses, Ears, & Hearts

Here in Thailand, we have a brand new prime minister who is peeved at Thailand’s deaf population because of they name by which they refer to him in sign language. They make a fist over their faces, recreating his generous nose, which some have likened to a rose apple. Apparently, he doesn’t feel that this is a respectful way to address a prime minister, but the deaf community has responded that they’ve been calling him “Big Nose” since the ’90s, when he helmed the brutal crackdown against peaceful democracy and human rights activists, and it would be too confusing to Thailand’s deaf to change their language now.

I can sympathize, in a way, having lost all hearing in my right ear quite suddenly just over a year ago. After spending five years building what had grown to become a deeply rewarding career of music production, losing half my hearing (and thus the ability to mix in stereo) was a stunner for my little mind on several levels: physically, because the brain uses stereophonic hearing to place the body in space, to place the sounds we hear (e.g. car horns, sirens, shouting people) to evaluate whether we’re in danger or need to take quick action; emotionally, because so much of my life inspiration had been invested in musical gardening, some of the fruits of which were almost ripe to be shared; and practically, because the SF Bay Area is one of the most expensive places in the world to live and suddenly i found myself without income and without a key body function that had become (half) the foundation of my income. Naturally, i visited many holistic healing heroes (from whom i learned a lot) and even stooped to allopathy (trans-tympanic corticosteriod injection and other joys), but all the king’s horses couldn’t repair the nerve that no longer carries signals from right eardrum to brain.

My old friends at Tao Garden (holistic healing center here in Thailand) didn’t have any new input on the ear, but they did manage to get my platelets flowing freely. The clumpiness of my blood (which i wrote about a couple of years ago — “too much sticky”) may have been part of issue with the tissue. (Blood too thick + capillaries too thin = traffic jam; that’s one theory.) They took about 300ml of blood out, infused it with ozone (which made it maraschino red!), and let it drip back in. Now the dark field microscope shows all my blood cells have lots of elbow room. Not likely to bring the hearing back in my right ear, but perhaps it’ll help me keep it in the left (i.e. if there’s any truth to my neurotologists’ theory that my hearing loss may have been due, at least in part, to a vascular issue, such as poor circulation due to thick blood not circulating properly through narrow capillaries).

Otherwise, the only thing that’s happened so far that has brought any noticeable change in my hearing is, interestingly enough, trekking up and down the paddies in the Himalayas, on and around the spot of land near Kaimpong that we were offered for our retreat center. On the first day we visited the land, i was surprised that, on maybe five occasions, i distinctly heard my own voice in my right ear as i was talking, for just a fraction of a second. The same happened once or twice since then. So far, it happens only during physical exertion, so i intend to exert all the more.

Meanwhile, though — and perhaps until the nanobots can go in there and bionicize my nerve, i’m profoundly enjoying the many blessings of sudden single-sided sensorineural deafness (with the bonus of tinnitus and other strange stuff in my right ear). The gift of deeper compassion for others who suffer invisible-yet-challenging impairments. The creative challenges of learning to mix in mono. The wonders of watching the brain and body-mind grow new pathways, finding new ways to take care of bizniss. The quiet joy of simply noticing the resilience and tenacity of my quiet joy. My happy camper cup overfloweth now more than ever before. This effortless happiness in a time of challenging change could be read as an unsolicited endorsement of Buddha in ’08 [campaign slogan: “Regime change begins at OM”], but maybe it’s just a statistical fluke, a dimpledchad on both cheeks…

Speaking of OM, tomorrow we fly to Delhi and make our way up to Dharamshala, for a reunion with KhanaNirvana, Maynerd Doggie, and the Ocean of Wisdom. For 10 days, HH the Dalai Lama will share with us his incomparable insight into living a life of loving kindness and skillful action to benefit others. I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to listen to his teachings again and then have a little time to retreat and reflect on them. Feeling humble and inspired as i prepare to spin a new cocoon…

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This past Tuesday, my neurotologist showed me the MRI pix of my brain. That in itself was (irrationally yet compellingly) worth the price of admission, but they also found a possible clue in the mystery of my sudden hearing loss: One of the MRI scans revealed a tiny, white, lit-up spot right on the edge of the labyrinth (the semi-circular canals that are the body’s gyroscope) in my right ear. My doc showed the slides to four other neurotologist colleagues, all of whom agreed unequivocally in their diagnosis: it’s clearly an unidentified lit-up phenomenon (ULP).

They ruled out imaging glitch (meaning it’s officially a “something”), leaving two most likely possibilities. Statistically more likely, it could be a simple inflammation from a recent viral infection in that area. The other possibility is that it could be a tiny (2 mm) acoustic neuroma (a benign tumor a.k.a. labyrinthine vestibular schwannoma), but it would be the rarest of the rare to find it in that particular location, right by the basketball hoops (though i wouldn’t be too surprised; as Glen told me, “Well, you are a person given to growing in unusual ways”).

What i really look like

They told me to get scanned again at the end of May and we’ll see if it has gone away or become a giant slobbering Miyazaki blob-monster. The thing is, i’m not sure their diagnosis would make much of a practical difference for me, since allopathic medicine would be my very, very last resort. Whether it’s a tumor or something else, the treatment modalities i’d try first are likely to be more or less the same: acupuncture, herbs, veggie juices, enzymes, meditation, good (mono) music, a nearly irrepressibly positive attitude, and a few extra laps in the ocean of love in which i’m so fortunate to live…

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Just now starting to get my energy back after a surreal week. Feels good to be able to walk right again (no more significant dizziness), and i drove for the first time since the hearing loss.

Despite rhythmic waves of worry (what might happen to my career as a music producer, and what might be happening in my skull?), i’m mostly chill, doing a fairly good job staying cheerful and taking care. Juicing lots of carrots (which, i recently learned, are as good for the hearing as they are for the eyes, and also have enzymes that help nerve regeneration).

I’m feeling grateful for meditation and some degree of perspective: at least i know it’s just an ear, and i still have love and joy and everything else (just mixed in mono).

This week is for tests (MRI and 2 more docs tomorrow) and spending most of the rest of my time resting and doing my best to stay really relaxed and not think too much.

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Saw an audiologist and an otologist at the California Ear Institute in San Ramon this afternoon for a battery of fancy tests.

The audiologist’s tests determined that my eardrum is fine (ruling out a decibel trauma, a.k.a. rock ‘n’ roll, as the culprit). Apparently, the issue is that the acoustic nerve isn’t sending the auditory messages it receives from the eardrum onward to the brain. This condition is called Sudden Single-Sided Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSSSHL, for “short”), and i’m told it has at least 100 theoretically possible causes, all of which are rare and not well understood by modern medical science. “You would have to pick something rare and arcane,” said my understandably concerned (and famously astute) mother.

More tests to be done to narrow the possible causes (starting with MRI and blood work).

But my attitude about it is simple: whatever it is, it’s all just energy, and energy can be worked with, so i intend to bring it back into balance. Maybe the hearing can’t be restored, but at least whatever imbalance caused it might be corrected. I’d certainly like to keep the hearing in my left ear, which is feeling more precious (and more vulnerable) now, and i do believe diet, meditation, and other lifestyle choices can go a long way to restoring and preserving balance…

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Yesterday around 4pm, i quite suddenly lost all hearing in my right ear. Within half an hour after the ear went silent, i became overwhelmingly dizzy and nauseous, then vomiting and shivering intensely and couldn’t walk without help (no balance).

Arley angelically came to the rescue and whisked me to the Oakland ER. The intake nurse blanched when she took my temperature: it was 91º (32.8ºC), which nobody there had ever seen in coastal California (the doc told me i was lucky to be alive, since my core temp had been at hypothermia levels for over two hours by the time he saw me). They took good care of me, placing me in a big heat balloon with an IV drip, and i started feeling a little better. Dara made it for the swing shift and they finally let me go home just after midnight.

None of the medical team at the ER had a clue what’s going on with me (you know you’re in trouble when the doctor tells you he’s been googling your symptoms), but they felt able to rule out stroke and a few other nasty things. Seems maybe something went wrong in my inner ear that has affected both my hearing and my balance. The doc said the only thing he found was a small “deposit” on my eardrum, whereupon i’m not sure which came first: the mind’s-eye movie of pigeon dropping defying the odds to land right in my ear, or the thought, “maybe it’s that Frankie Valli song that’s been stuck in my head ever since we saw “Jersey Boys.”

I still can’t hear at all on the right side, but at least the balance is returning (i’m still dizzy but can walk without help now). They say my hearing may come back or may not, and i’m doing my best to be relaxed about that, joking about becoming the world’s most celebrated monophonic music producer (though Brian Wilson might bump me to 2nd chair). I have an appointment with an ENT on Wednesday.

It was an edifying experience, to say the least, sharing the ER ward with a motley cast of Oakland characters. The big-hearted nurses were as grounded and comforting as some of the patients were, um, animated. But it was saddening to witness how understaffed, underfunded, and overcrowded a public hospital can be. There were around 200 patients waiting for attention in the ER lobby when i arrived, many of them in pretty bad shape, and i only got to jump the queue because the mystified triage nurse figured i might be even worse off than the rest of them… and still it took an eternity before a doctor came to see me. Ever tried to give a medical history and fill out insurance forms when you’re vomiting, shaking, and can’t speak?

Whatever may happen with my hearing, i’m grateful for this experience and the ways in which it put me more deeply in touch with the suffering of others, and with my own fragility and mortality.

All things impermanent and in constant flux. Life is precious and easily lost. I’d like to make the best of each mOMent…

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Sawadee khap from Doi Saket, where i’m planted once again in the Tao Garden, polishing my inner smile. 🙂

Yesterday was the first slow, leisurely day i’ve had since i left India two months ago… and now, after a whistle-stop tour of my world in Oakland (mostly my desk, truth be told), i’m finally catching up on missed breaths, and feeling grateful to be exactly where i am.

(In a heartbeat, it’s suddenly raining buckets here.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A week ago, in a jetlagged layover dream, i sat on the shore in Kowloon (notably more graffitti’d under Chinese administration), watching the clouds blow by in the mirrored windows of the feelgood Hong Kong skyscrapers, then took the subway into veggie paradise. Dinner in Bangkok a few hours later… why can’t i do this every day? 🙂

Like life, but somehow denser, Bangkok is always a mixed bag, but the mix keeps getting sweeter as i navigate more knowingly. This time was extra-special though, since the whole city threw a double birthday party for the Buddha and me. I wondered how we should celebrate, and he suggested we hit the streets early and find some folks who could use a little love. The first person i invited to our heart party was a 50-something leper propped up against the Skytrain stairwell. I bought him a few meals, but i got the impression that the smiles were even more nourishing to him, by the way he lit up. Likewise for all the other partygoers i recruited across the city. May those candles stay alight…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Spent most of the last week within a few blocks of my beloved Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. Yes, the sequel! We’ve returned for another round of recording and filming, and oh am i glad we did!

The reunion with our Vietnamese musical-kung fu family was very sweet — and somehow even warmer than before. No committees, no toasts, just love and music. Felt like coming home to family. We recorded in a well-appointed home studio run by a new friend, Ho Hoai Anh, who is a very popular musician in his own right but, like his elder Khanh, is very down-to-earth and can’t be bothered with protocol. Hoai Anh was a godsend as a second engineer, helping to keep us all in sync with graceful technical and cultural translation. The result is a solid hour of good performances, cleanly captured, and i can’t wait to get home and mix them.

My only regret is that everything went so deliciously smoothly that i have no fodder for drama to keep y’all cliffhung this time, so i guess your entertainment will have to come from the two CDs we’ll be releasing in September. 🙂

On the inner plane, the big news in Hanoi was my reunion with Hoan Kiem Lake. Saw familiar faces there — others who, like me, seem drawn to her, sit facing her, in silence. The old folks, doing what matters most. Young lovers, in pairs and alone, longing. The tai-chi ladies with their fans and swords. The kung-fu dudes whacking their wrists and forearms against the poles to toughen themselves up, and eyeballing the growth of each other’s muscles. A woman in her 60s, with a condition that renders her helpless as an infant, being held by her husband or brother, who every day brings her to the lake, lovingly feeds her on the bench, then takes her walking Butoh-slowly around the water.

I don’t know how to explain, except to say that, somehow, the spirit of that lake is one of my best friends in this world. Doing my morning chi kung with her, strolling around her, or just sitting by her banks, i feel more like me. Kinda wish i could take her home in a bottle, but she definitely lives in my heart.

Meanwhile, here at Tao Garden, there’s nowhere to go but in and nothing to do but bloom. Returning after several intense months, i’m awestruck by the dramatic non-impact of peace… My arrival here was a meteor hitting the ocean with no splash… just a gentle rippling, a rustle in the leaves, and i’m here, floating…

I notice that when i’m so deeply peaceful i don’t need to eat much. The food here is divine, but i feel so nourished by everything else around me that my (famously enormous) appetite for gourmet Asian vegan grub is quickly satisfied, despite the fact that i’m quite physically active. This is in sharp contrast with my life in the city, where i’m often moving only my eyes and fingers (and the hard drive in my head) yet feeling ravenous, insatiable.

Looking deeper into these contrasts, while my perspective is fresh, i am humbled in recognition of the undeniable power of place. I could be doing the same thing with the same attitude and intention in a dozen different places and have a dozen utterly different experiences. Just being in a city makes me hungry, even when by all appearances i’m not doing much… but in the light of contrast here i see the truth is i am doing a lot when i’m in the city, just being there: my system is being bombarded with myriad stimuli, and of course it’s going to react, and those reactions burn energy. But, as Marshall McLuhan aptly put it, “whoever it was discovered water, you can be sure it wasn’t a fish.” We become desensitized to what is all around us, to the point where even some of the biggest influences on us can become invisible.

It seems i’m getting a tiny bit better at it. Though i certainly didn’t arrive at Tao Garden this time in the same great shape i was in when i left it last October, i clearly did arrive here in much better shape than when i arrived last time. That’s something.

But, inevitably, i have to ask: why leave? I’m feeling more motivated than ever to build community in nature. It just works.

Yo ho ho, a village life for me.

Everyone please go outside. 🙂

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Speaking of the village life, a week from now i will transplant my retreat from the manicured majesty of Tao Garden to the fertile terraced slopes of Sikkim. I’ll be in India till mid-July, doing a combination of creative and meditative retreating and project-related advancing, starting with the former and ramping up to the latter. At some point (dates still in the air), i’ll be heading back to the land in the West Bengal Hills to meet with Ani Sonam La, her family, and our South African friends to take the next steps on our project there.

For the last week of May and most of June, i’ll be very, very far from the Internet (yes, there are still a few places it doesn’t reach), so if you don’t hear from me again till July (which is likely), well, no news is very, very good news for this flower who blooms in stillness.

Juicy love from the mango forest…

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When i arrived at Tao Garden, my breathing was shallow. I didn’t realize how shallow it had become, because, well… i guess i forgot to breathe for the last year or so. But after just a few days of chi kung, yoga, meditation, and simply breathing mindfully, my chest is open again.

Chi Kung Pavilion at Tao Garden

And i can move, too! Twisting and stretching in unfamiliar yet totally natural ways. “Long, hollow bones,” said the chi kung instructor, and i saw myself as Plastic Man until it occurred to me that i’d be healthier if i were made from eco-friendlier material. Now i’m an ocean plant, undulating in the waves, with my roots stretching down through the core of the earth and my fronds reaching up into the next galaxy, blowing gently in the solar wind… Or so i’m told, and i’m starting to believe it. 🙂

Take Five Diagnostic Methodologies & Call Me in the Morning

This week has turned out to be largely about balancing. I’ve had too much this and not enough that for too long, and i was starting to feel it almost everywhere that has feelers. A cross-disciplinary team of doctors from Eastern and Western medical traditions did my intake. The standard vitals were all perfect, and if this had been a conventional modern medical checkup i would’ve walked with a clean bill of health… but i knew i had issues, because i live in my body, so i wasn’t surprised that the interdisciplinary testing turned up stuff that the standard medical exam wouldn’t. Then the fancy computers and gizmos substantiate the diagnoses, from different angles. The result is, at worst, a lot of thought-provoking possibilities and, at best, a balanced and detailed picture of one’s health. If all the different doctors and machines arrive at the same conclusions, it builds a certain degree of confidence in the diagnosis and increases the motivation for treatment.

The battery of tests they did for my intake was fascinating. Amazing to see photos and charts and graphs and numbers confirming what my intuition — and that of my excellent acupuncturist, Maureen Raytis, and several other healer friends — had said about my body and its systems: basically, (a) i have more energy activity in my heart than the miraculous little muscle can handle (that’s right folks, i love and feel too much… for my relative lack of grounding, anyway), and it’s been sucking all the chi out of my kidneys, contributing to my lower back trouble, and (b) the emotional stuff has wound its way into anxiety, which has kept my nervous system on high-alert, robbing energy from my digestion, disturbing my sleep, and generally crampin’ my style. Another consensus: Mr. Computer Man spends far too much of his life in a chair, so my blood circulation and oxygenation is baaaaaad (“blood is too much sticky”), but we knew that already.

What Doesn’t Kill You…

Now treatment time: They put me on a crazy machine to circulate my blood — it’s like a stairmaster with no stairs, just a ferocious jiggler under the feet to shake the whole body. I felt like a can of paint in the shaker machine that mixes in the tints. It got my blood going, alright — so much that it blew a bunch of capillaries in my nose, and for the next two days i looked like Rudolph with a faux crackle finish. I’ll (un)stick with the trampoline from now on, thanks.

So, the exercise part is easy, but what to do with all the surplus energy in that easily overexcited SNAG heart o’ mine? Start by watching… closely… more closely than before, because whatever i’ve done before has baked me into a half pretzel…

OK, i see that, until now, my “mindfulness” practice has been focused too narrowly — too much attention fixed on the small chunk of my mind that sits in my skull and (often to a lesser extent) its downstairs neighbors in the heart and the gut. I’m pretty vigilant in monitoring my thoughts and some of the energy in my body, but i’m still sleeping through a lot of the action, with the result that my mind (or at least the aspects of it that i’m watching) is almost always tranquil, and yet my body (especially my nervous system and subtler emotional field) is quite often a mess. There’s a lot of powerful machinery in there that is doing who-knows-what, and i need to master it because, for practical purposes, it’s me.

Enter the Dragon Breathing

Meditation Hall

It had been over a decade since i’d studied chi kung (a time-tested Chinese movement-meditation-martial-art tradition offering many practices to keep the body’s vital energies flowing and balanced, for good health, longevity, and happiness), and both my practice and my understanding had atrophied (and with them, my energy systems). The kind teachers here helped me identify dozens of practices (stretches or movements combined with breathing patterns and meditations) that i can do specifically to move the energy from the parts of my body where there’s too much (e.g. heart and sacrum) to the other parts that have been starving (e.g. kidneys and digestive system).

The most helpful one for my overflowing heart is the simplest: feeling the energy in my heart and, when it gets intense, dumping it like a bucket into my belly. It’s the suddenness of the dumping that moves the energy much more effectively than the gentler and more gradual practices i’ve normally used. This grounds and relaxes my heart instantly. I’m doing it hundreds of times a day, and it’s changing my world. And after dumping the energy into my belly, at the advice of one of the therapists, i roll some back to the kidneys so they’re nice and wet and smiling, and pour a little more into my digestive tract.

[If it seems like i’m earning my New Age credentials here, consider that this stuff is actually really Old Age, as in millennia. Asia has accumulated a massive body of knowledge about the body and mind that is, in many cases, highly complementary to the data that modern science has collected in its relatively short life. Like acupuncture and other branches of traditional Chinese medicine, chi kung works, and it goes a long way toward keeping hundreds of millions of people healthy, fit, flexible, and shining even into advanced age.]

So, yes, i’m feeling big improvement in a short time… but one week isn’t gonna do it. If i go back to my old habits, i’ll be just as tweaked this time next year, but a year older and that much less resilient. I need new habits, now. My mindfulness practice must expand throughout my body and the field around it. If i can watch the whole picture as well as i’ve trained myself to watch a part of it, i’ll live to be infinity like all the cool Taoist dudes are doing. 😉 I’ll have much more to give, and i’ll enjoy it…

Will y’all please remind me when i’m back home and busy again?

Ho Chi Minh Trailhead

Speaking of gettin’ busy, tomorrow morning, after my mug of hot water and my small plate of dragon fruit with a squeeze of lime (i was never wild about dragon fruit until i discovered its lime alchemy — wow!), i’ll be pulling out of paradise to make my way to Vietnam, where the outer work of this journey begins.

But first, a sticky stopover day in Bangkok, my favorite environmentally devastated Asian supercity. Think i’ll get my teeth cleaned while i’m there: something just isn’t right when the end of the digestive tract feels cleaner than the beginning! 😉

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Sawasdee khap from the Universal Tao Garden, home of the Inner Smile and observatory of the Microcosmic Orbit, where you can avail of free Wi-Fi access sipping garcinia tea in the dining pagoda while waiting to get your chi circulated, your blood ozonated, your arteries chelated, and your colon irrigated — all before lunch, and all for less than a ticket to a Britney Spears concert.

I heard the call and spontaneously left Chiang Mai this afternoon to transplant my retreat an hour northeast, to this most exquisitely green, beautiful, and eco-friendly healing center founded by world-renowned Taoist teacher Mantak Chia, and i’m already glad i did. I had some organic green papaya salad and downed a glass of mighty amalaki juice (visualize intense pucker), then slipped into the free nightly Tao yin yoga class and hit the mat just in time to hear the sweet and gentle Italian-accented instructor begin the class saying, “Close your eyes… now put your hands on your jade pillow…” An hour and a half later, i’m drenched in sweat, quivering from actual use of muscles other than those required for typing, and almost immortal… (OK, scratch that last one.)

Those of you who are aware of my history of kidney trouble will no doubt be pleased to know that my once-dour renal twins are now glowing with a warm sapphire light, like the sun just below the surface of the clear ocean off Koh Tao… and, yes, as advertised, they’re smiling at me. In fact, it’s a full-on lovefest in my grinning gut, with all my internal organs beaming at each other like one of those sweet gooey connecty moments in the foyer or the kitchen for which our beloved Earthville House in Oakland has earned a well-deserved reputation. Tomorrow morning, after chi kung in the mango grove, i’ll get my dark-field blood scan, my nutri-energetics analysis, and my bio-electrographic evaluation so we can find out what my organs are so happy about. Then, as a bonus, i get my brain synchronized! It’s about time, is all i can say.

Dropping Out, Dropping In

With each passing day, i feel another exponent more like the “me” i remember from more balanced days in the late ’90s — a person i more enjoy being. This is really the first time i’ve felt the spaciousness to make a real dent in unpacking the last four years of life, since returning to the States after living for seven life-changing years in India. There’s lots to notice in myself: what has changed since returning to the US, what’s the same, and what’s wanting to shift. Part of the intention for immersing myself in retreat on Asian soil is to bring myself full circle to reclaim some of the gems i found here years ago and gradually misplaced in the confusion of trying to situate myself as a person in my new home — both as an irreversibly global citizen trying to navigate the peculiar landscape of “American” cultural expectations (quite a few of which, believe it or not, i’d entirely forgotten, including some i must admit i wasn’t entirely pleased to remember) and, deeper down, as an inherently unlocatable spirit wanting to cooperate with the flow of a place and time without losing the universal signal in the local noise…

In my morning sit yesterday, i unearthed a time capsule i had buried for myself back in ’96, shortly before we opened KhanaNirvana — a text i had compiled from my own translations of the Tibetan texts i’d been studying. I had shared with one of my teachers there (Geshe Sonam Rinchen) that i had found it difficult to connect authentically with some parts of the texts and, after some questioning, it seemed to be a matter of translation, so i was inspired to retranslate my daily practice texts in a way more resonant for me. He affirmed that my own translation would be potentially more powerful as a tool for me, provided the translation was accurate enough not to introduce distortions of meaning into the text i would be using as a guidebook. So, i took care to go over all the points in question with him and other teachers to check my understanding of the material, and then began composing this personalized practice guide. I never “finished” it: once we launched KhanaNirvana, i scarcely set eyes on any text that wasn’t a menu, a project write-up, a syllabus, or a spreadsheet for the next five years or so.

Well, that old file is here on my laptop, and during my meditation i was inspired to open it up. [Bad in-joke for my vajra siblings: “short terma.” 😉 ] I spent the next few hours in waves of different flavors of tears, sad to have forgotten so much, but profoundly grateful for the reminders.

Note to self: Always journal the epiphanies. You think in the moment that it’s so clear that you could never possibly forget, but then… Er, sorry, what was i saying?

In Thailand, Even Cities Are Getting Facelifts

To follow up on my last post about changes in Chiang Mai, a friendly local i talked with at one of the wats shed some light. He started by telling me that the much-loved King Bhumibol made his way up north in 2003, which right away gave me a sense of how the town might have been scrubbed clean. Anyone who stayed in Dharamshala long enough to see the Dalai Lama’s motorcade make an exit from the temple compound that serves as his exile home know the scene: the faithful (and the politically liable) go aggro for several days leading up to the moment his car pulls out of the gate and onto the public road, picking up weeks or months worth of litter and throwing up a fresh lick of paint here and there. Likewise, when one of the V.V.I.P. Indian ministers is about to pay a rare visit, well, suddenly someone in the Public Works Department “remembers” that they had been given a budget for road repair several years back but it somehow got spent on chai and laddoos, so they pool their paan (betel) money, run out and fire up the tar car to pave the road, and suddenly the state of transportation leaps forward from the 17th century to, well, the 1950s.

In a similar spirit, it seems, Chiang Mai cleaned itself up in anticipation of the King’s visit, but the King also made his own contributions. He and the Queen are both busy philanthropists, and apparently he put some love and largesse into spiffing up the town and boosting its local economy. Gotta love a ruler with at least some part of a heart. (Where can we get the US one o’ them?)

My Thai friend also identified one of the statues i’d been curious about — a sassy sentinel standing on one corner of the temple roof: “What in your country you call Cupid!” On a Theravada wat. Who knew?

Fortune smiling on Chiang Mai as it may be in general, the economy has been sagging again since the Tsunami, due in large part to a precipitous 60% drop in tourism, and i did find a few folks panhandling once i finally made a foray to the spendier part of town. Some of them were clearly pros, raking in far more in a typical day than your average wage earner. On the advice of local social workers, i usually give the pros only smiles. But i found one gentle, clear-eyed young man with no legs sitting on his own, propped up against a wall and, since i figured he probably can’t hold a job and the social stigma adds insult to injury, i reached into my pocket for him. We had a short, sweet moment of connection, but since i speak very little Thai (poot Thai mai dai!), i didn’t get to learn his story (which i normally try to do when there’s no language barrier). Food money and a loving smile… it feels so painful to want to do more, and to know the scale of the challenge is so daunting… but we can’t let that stop us from doing something.

I spend most of my time working for change in the form of projects that take a long time to materialize, so it feels important for me to find opportunities to give something with immediate benefit as well — both so my legless friend can eat and so i can keep at least one little finger in touch with the way the other ninety-something percent lives. Both needs are valid and valuable, but mine is a luxurious abstraction and his is a churning gut, and… can i even imagine what his life is like? In any case, it’s clear that, whether he really needs my support or not, i need my heart to stay open to feel and active to serve.

~~~

More news at 11, when my brain is synchronized (assuming i can still type…)

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Something magic happens when everything familiar is removed from the outside, and all that’s left is (imaginary) me… same old me, new world (or, as one of my old songs goes, “Same Planet, Different Universe”). Kinda like a ginormous sensory deprivation tank but with lots of other auspiciously random people in it, it reflects me back to me from unexpected angles.

(Remind me to give myself the gift of a solo retreat more often. One would think i oughta know by now: it’s amazing how amazed i still am that the present is such a high-yield investment in the future.)

Transition & Transformation

I managed to keep myself awake until 10 last night, to help my body adjust to Thai time, but still awoke around 3:30am to a dark guest house bedroom and a yakety-yaketing mind. For our protagonist, Mr. Intentional (who long ago somehow got the idea that the objective was to control the mind, to keep it focused on the magic, the meaningful, and the moving), it’s a peculiar humbling to sneak up and catch himself meandering in the mundane. Truth be told, this discovery is, sadly, all too common, but what made today different was that, instead of racing through the motions of a morning practice, saying “close enough for rock ‘n’ roll” and leaping from the bed directly to the desk, i chose to park the runaway truck and spend the next couple of hours sinking in a little deeper…

Almost immediately when i generated that clear resolve, i felt that familiar deep shift — like unplugging from the matrix and jacking back into the training program, putting the reins of my mind back in the most trusted hands (the practice itself). Simply letting the awareness rest lightly instead of controlling it tightly is not unlike the difference between skiing fresh powder and scraping down steep sheets of ice.

As that familiar effortless experience returned and grew clearer and steadier, i remembered how it felt when i used to do a proper, extended sit every day… and some days that’s all i would do.

I suppose one could say i needed to learn to walk with one eye open. I had spent enough of my life in more extreme states — either “in the zone” or out of commission — that it was valuable for me to learn simply to function (not well but adequately) when i’m not at my best. But even if there’s value in learning to be OK with “just barely good enough” when circumstances don’t permit any better, recently i’ve become too good at it. I’m glad to have made friends with mindstream mediocrity, but i’m clear that i wouldn’t want to live my entire life there if i had a choice. And, like most meditators, i’m motivated by the conviction that we do have a choice: we can gradually improve our relationships with our own hearts and mind so that, whatever thoughts, feelings and experiences may arise and pass, we are more deeply at ease with them and, with time, more able to respond to the flow of life with greater grace.

It’s integration time again. The exalted and elusive Middle Way of socially-engaged contemplative practice is only truly the “middle” if it is both truly engaged and truly contemplative… and the former (as challenging as it can be) comes much more easily than the latter, so discipline is my friend. I choose this path in part because it feels superlatively inspiring to walk it when i am both disciplined and relaxed enough to walk it in earnest, but even more because i have so much more to share with the world when i take care of my energy, health, and practice in this way. I love my job.

Change in Chiang Mai

This is a wonderful time of year to be in Chiang Mai. The northern monsoon has just spritzed its last bits, so there’s lots of lush green and the air’s pretty clean (unless one is right behind a propane-burning tuk-tuk), and yet it’s early in the season so not many farangs (foreigners) have rolled into town (which makes it easier to find an available computer in one of the bazillion internet cafés that have appeared since i was last here a few years ago).

I made a point of getting completely lost right away so i could reacquaint myself with the laid-back northern capital of Thailand, which has long been a favorite chillville for me (and so i could keep my jetlagged body awake until the sun went down). One of the first things i noticed, walking through labyrinths of back alleys, was that there are now recycling bins all over, and some of the cooking classes have gone organic. Barely any trash on the street anymore. The moat around the old city center (Chiang Mai was historically a fortified town) is still chocolate brown, but it no longer reeks, which i noticed when an overzealous fountain in the middle of the moat sprayed a few drops of urban chocolate on my face and i didn’t melt into a puddle of toxic goo from the stench as i might’ve in years past.

The children look happy and well fed. Where are the beggars? And the infamously raucous employees of the red-light district? Are these high-season-only fixtures of Chiang Mai? I don’t see them this time. We did notice seasonal migrations living in India: every year we would watch the beggars multiply exponentially before the peak tourist season and then move on to greener pastures when the tide of money ebbed. Is that what’s happening here, or have the marginalized been pressed further toward the margins, or are things actually looking up for the downtrodden in Chiang Mai? I’ll ask around.

It’s interesting revisiting the wats (Buddhist temple-monasteries) too. I remember my awe and wonder, in my first visits to Thai wats back in 1992, was focused on the art and the architecture — the incomparably crafted pagodas, statues, paintings, frescoes, carvings, and textiles. Now what really strikes me is the graceful groundedness and unassuming presence of the white-haired, white-robed nun looking after the place. Weightlessly anchored, she is a hOMing beacon for my travel-weary, Americancerous mind. We acknowledge each other with a slight bow and a flash of very gently connecting eye contact, and we spend the next half hour sitting in the temple alone together, feeling our breathing and listening to the birds. I’m in my element (and vice versa).

The Road Ahead

In a week, i’ll be exiting the cozy, familiar, farang-friendly womb of Chiang Mai to explore the new (to me) world of Vietnam. Retreat will give way to advance, the anything-goes-as-long-as-you-don’t-insult-the-King-or-Thai-culture openness of Thailand will give way to the nothing-happens-without-someone-watching-and-reporting-on-it constriction of the so-called “Communist” police state in northern Vietnam, and Pad Thai and green papaya salad will give way to Buddha-only-knows-what-they’ll-feed-me in Duong Coc village (where my recording project will be focused). And, in the middle of all this, the hearts of people will be the same, but how will we find each other?

In the Vietnamese language (the official Hanoi dialect, which i’ve just begun studying), there are 18 different ways to pronounce the letter “a” and each of them make the difference between one word (the one you meant) and a completely different word. You say toMAYto, i say toMAHto, bit we’re each talking about two entirely different things — and one is a tasty fruit while the other might be an unforgivable insult to my new friend’s ancestors… but no pressure or anything. 😉 I’m glad i enjoy learning.

Speaking of which, the roosters are ringing the school bell — a little study to keep the embers warm, and then a breakfast adventure. There’s an organic produce market here now (several, apparently), and my belly says it’s time to discover a new fruit.